Jack Bilmes
1940 – 2021
In memory
Photo courtesy of Dept. of Anthropolgy, UH Manoa
Academic Legacy
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by Hiroaki Izumi
Assistant Professor, Language Center
Kyoto University of Foreign Studies
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Jack Bilmes was an original thinker and a keen observer of human life. Even his anthropology colleagues called him a scholar’s scholar. He contributed to the fields of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis from his unique standpoint as an anthropologist. It may be more accurate to say that he was a discursive anthropologist. For him, language and culture were always foundational. Rejecting mentalistic explanations, such as intention and motivation, he sought to develop a rigorous, structural approach that enables us to study more fully and systematically meaning and action that members of a culture deploy in real-life situations. He mainly relied on conversation analysis but incorporated ideas from neighbor disciplines, such as semantics, pragmatics, and cultural anthropology. He often asked, “Is it totally irrelevant? Or does it offer something useful?” Although he appreciated different levels of structural analyses, he was thoroughly committed to the empirical analysis of the methods that social members cooperatively and publicly produce.
The development of Jack’s thinking on discourse and human interaction can be traced back to his first book titled “Discourse and Behavior,” which was written following what he referred to as the “failure” of his dissertation research and his recognition of the failure of orthodox sociology. In the book, neither did he take a conventional sociological approach nor a radical ethnomethodological view. Instead, he maintained the middle ground. He wrote, “The meaning of any verbal expression is always indexical, but it is never entirely indexical.” His long-lasting interests in meaning and action flourished in his later years through the study of formulations and semantic fields. Using Harvey Sacks’s seminal work on categories and formulation as the bridge, he transformed ethnosemantics and linguistic pragmatics into the interactionally sensitive program of occasioned semantics—the study of meaningful expressions in actual use. In so doing, he advanced the analysis of semantic relations created in situated discourse, particularly taxonomic and scaling phenomena. The results of his research were published as a book and a series of articles, including a collaboration with his colleagues and students.
Jack was an adventurous scholar, willing to cross disciplinary boundaries and bend conventions for the advancement of knowledge. He taught us the importance of curiosity and an open-minded appreciation of various approaches closely related to conversation analysis that may support us in systematically examining the complexity of discursive phenomena that social actors themselves create in the commonsense world of everyday discourse. With uncommon humility and humor, he always presented himself as a student of life and encouraged us to take our work seriously, but never ourselves. May we continue to honor Jack’s life as we build upon the rich foundation he created throughout his impressive career. And, as we remember him and grieve our collective loss, we can take comfort in knowing that his scholarly legacy and personal spirit will live on through us forever.
Jacob “Jack” Bilmes: A Eulogy, 1940—2021
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by Alan Howard
Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology
University of Hawaii at Manoa
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Jack Bilmes was born and raised in Queens, New York, where he was exposed to a Jewish culture that included a love of learning, a penchant for puzzling over life’s mysteries, debating viewpoints, and a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor that often involves a play on words. These attributes were embedded in Jack’s character, in combination with a fascination with the more exotic and bizarre aspects of human nature. Such qualities made him a superb anthropologist and teacher, and a delightful friend.
Jack was accepted to the prestigious Bronx School of Science, which he attended for a year, after which point his mother decided the commute from Flushing was too far. After graduating from Flushing High School, Jack enrolled in Alfred University in upstate New York, where he encountered a culture of antisemitism and other parochialisms that motivated him to leave in favor of Brandeis University in Boston, where he majored in English and American literature. Following graduation in 1961, he went for Peace Corps training at the University of Michigan where he met his wife-to-be, Pongsuwan, shortly before leaving for Thailand to teach English as a second language. They married in 1963 when he concluded his term of service. Jack returned to the United States, having been accepted to the graduate program in Southeast Asian Studies at Yale University. While working toward his master’s degree, Jack nurtured an interest in anthropology. He took time off from his studies and accepted the position of community development advisor in Laos for the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1965 to 1967 to explore his budding passion. He did eventually return to Yale and completed his master’s degree 1968.
His love of anthropology led him to seek advanced degrees in the subject at Stanford University, where he obtained an M.A. in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1974 for research that he conducted in two northern Thai villages, to which he returned seven times between 1988 and 2004. He also did fieldwork in Bali in 1997.
Jack joined the Department of Anthropology at UH Manoa in 1973 as visiting assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 1981 and to full professor in 1990. He loved teaching, especially the introductory course in cultural anthropology and graduate seminars, and continued to do so as emeritus professor, without compensation, following his formal retirement in 2011. He also served as graduate chair in the Department from 2009 to 2011, and on numerous M.A. and Ph.D. committees.
Over the years, his research and teaching interests turned to conversation and discourse analysis, which included logical elements of arguments and negotiations, as well as ethnomethodology and social action theory. In line with these interests, in 1977 and again in 1982 he received permission to conduct research at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington D.C., where he recorded meetings and debates and analyzed them accordingly.
As his international reputation in these areas grew, he was invited to take up visiting positions in a number of foreign universities and institutes, including the Laboratoire Ethnologie, University of Paris—Nanterres; Aalborg University in Denmark; and Sun Yat Sen University in Guangzhou, China. He also was a fellow in the Institute of Culture & Communication at the East-West Center in 1989.
His list of publications is impressive and includes two books—Discourse and Behavior (1986) and an online edition of The Structure and Meaning in Talk: Explorations in Category Analysis (2015)—and 46 articles and book chapters. In addition, he regularly organized sessions and gave presentations at conferences all over the world. In recent years he has been internationally recognized as one of the leading innovators in his chosen field.
Sports were also an important part of Jack’s life. He was a keen competitor in ping pong and tennis, which we played together regularly, and in later years a wonderful companion on the golf course, where, despite serious health issues, he continued to play until shortly before his death.
He is survived by his wife, Pongsuwan, daughter Leela (Brian), and granddaughters Olivia and Malia, with whom he enjoyed sharing magic tricks and a love of music of many genres.
Personally I will miss him very, very much. His passing leaves a considerable gap in my life. I’ll miss him as a sports companion and as source of clever humor, but most of all I’ll miss the discussions (and debates) about the most profound of issues, from politics to cultural relativism to the meanings of life and death. The great thing was he made me think! (I still have discussions with him in my head, but it’s nowhere near as exhilarating.) I’m sure many others who were fortunate enough to have Jack as part of their lives—family members, students, colleagues, and others—will feel likewise.
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